BioEnviroAg Announces Plans for 1,600 Acre Campus at Montgomery County Agricultural Preserve

Facility to Include Global Seed Bank, Porcine Disease Research Facility

If Armageddon strikes, the future of life on earth may hinge on Montgomery County. A new Global Seed Bank housing more than 30,000 species is just one of the features unveiled by BioEnviroAg GmbH & Co. this week in plans for their 1,200-acre Maryland Tech Center, or MTC.

MTC's location in the heart of the county's Agricultural Preserve was approved under a pandemic era rule allowing the County Council to rezone up to ten percent of the 93,000 acres preserve for agricultural research and development use. BioEnviroAg’s ninety-nine-year lease payments are offset by funds the county received through the American Rescue Plan.

BioEnviroAg GmbH & Co. is a leader in disease prevention in livestock and farming in Europe and Asia. MTC will house 8,000 swine, and researchers say their first projects are eliminating both swine flu and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus by 2032. An outbreak of the latter killed 182 people in Indiana in 1912, a rare instance of the virus transferring from hogs to humans. "We will recreate conditions that allowed it to jump to humans, giving us understanding how it mutates," said BioEnviroAg scientist Wei Xizhong.

The Global Seedbank design includes a 300,000 sq ft warehouse built to withstand a category 5 hurricane or 8.0 Richter scale earthquake. To ensure uninterrupted power, the seedbank will be powered by Montgomery County’s first small modular reactor, or SMR. A fraction of the size of a conventional nuclear power reactor, an SMR’s modular design makes it possible for systems and components to be factory-assembled and transported as a unit for installation.

BioEnviroAg will hold a groundbreaking ceremony in the spring of 2023.